Children carrying excess fats may be toying with their blood pressure. A groundbreaking study claims that little alterations in weight can lead to greater differences in the blood pressure for overweight children. It seems that BMIs in the 85th percentile or higher is overweight.
Blood pressure, height and weight of 1,113 children were analyzed throughout the study and the more than ten year old follow-up. Having accumulated the data, scientists compared children’s BMI to national charts adjusted for age, sex and height. It appeared that BMI of a lower than 85th percentile did not affect blood pressure. BMI effect seemed to be stronger among children in the 90th percentile. Wanzhu Tu, co-author of the study, and colleagues claim that the effect on systolic blood pressure of overweight boys’ BMI percentile was 4.6 times that in normal-weight boys.
Similar results were reported for diastolic pressure in both boys and girls. BMI percentile and blood pressure links in normal-weight children were probably weaker. It was concluded that BMI effect is much greater in overweight kids. Even a slight reduction in BMI can possibly lead to a significant benefit in blood pressure among overweight kids. Similarly a small rise in BMI may heighten chances of increased blood pressure.
The study was presented at the American Heart Association’s High Blood Pressure research 2010 Scientific Sessions.